Investment Frontiers Symposia (Photo credit: apec2011ceosummit)

If you have already paid off all of your debt in credit cards and have in mind financial goals like buying a home, paying college tuition, or retirement savings, then you should do your homework prior to making any investment decisions.  You should have the answers to the following questions:

• How much risk for tolerance do you have?
• What kinds of investments are you looking at: mutual funds, bonds, stocks?
• Are you interested in purchasing an annuity or an IRA?
• Do they offer a 401K plan at your job?

Wind turbines (Vendsyssel, Denmark, 2004) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The price of operating a business has skyrocketed over the last two decades, but it is possible to cut costs when it comes to electricity. Office appliances now account for the majority of electric costs. When you choose the right office appliances, operate office appliances correctly and compare business electricity prices you can save your business thousands of pounds each year.

Office Appliances Eats Profit

Office appliances are the largest electrical expense of your business. The more equipment you use and the longer it stays powered on, the more profit it continues to eat. However, if you understand exactly which pieces of office appliances consume the most electricity and what you can do to prevent waste, then you will begin to see the savings directly on your bottom line.

Webvan (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A few things were never intended to be, yet that does not imply that buyers won't stack millions of pounds on a bad idea - or perhaps a great idea that went bad. Whether or not they slumped and ripped or pulled investors dry, these investment strategies simply failed to work.

Amp'd Mobile: Amp'd Cell stands top for cash burning, with $360 million being ended up in bankruptcy. Their main concern was its clients' capability to invest.  Whilst various other cellular companies verify for a capability to pay expenses in a month time, the company allow it until 3 months and promoted to those risky clients. It has been noted that 80,000 of its 175,000 clients were not able to pay their expenses.

Procket: This was one of the highly valued telecom companies in the U.S. The company had $272 million in capital along with a worth of $1.55 billion however was eventually bought by behemoth Cisco Systems Inc. for a deflating $89 million.

Webvan: Webvan had been a grocery delivery company which served 9 metro cities. However, in 2001, the business went bankrupt once it made plans to expand to 26 more cities with $1.2 billion budget. Regardless of millions in product sales, their collapse was due to a money-burn which surpassed product sales development.  Significant buys included $1 billion for manufacturing facilities, business servers and much more than one hundred Aeron chairs.

In 2011, the oil and gas industry in Texas experienced growth in nearly every sector, including drilling permits and employment. According to a report by the Texas Alliance of Energy Producers (TAEP), higher oil prices in Texas resulted in a ripple effect that resulted in an across-the-board increase in energy payrolls in the state. As a result, the state of Texas enjoyed strong economic performance in 2011 while the rest of the United States continued to struggle with the effects of a recession.

Joaquín Guzmán Loera drug lord and lider of the Sinaloa drug cartel in Mexico. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The 1980’s have become known as the time of the cocaine explosion in North America, where this predominately Central American produced drug was consumed by our country in abundance for the first time since prior generations. The 1980’s were a time when cocaine usage crossed into all social and economic lines to sub-urban and rural America, and over into the stereotypical impoverished ghetto’s of the inner city to the hands of lawyers, actors, housewives and the average John Doe. Since then, with the advent of new trends in synthetic illegal narcotics usage such as “ecstasy”, “methamphetamines”, and even prescription drug abuse with the like of “oxycotin” and so on that have since been introduced to the generation y/millenials, the reputation of the drug cocaine usage in has decreased in notoriety as something of the past.

Hovering in the 12,800 to the 13,000 range, the Dow Jones is often a barometer of the economy. As the United States economy unfolds in 2012, it will have to overcome several hurdles before the Dow Jones can possibly stay above 13,000 for an extended period of time.  Consumer data, unemployment rates, the housing and the effects of the end of the Iraq War are all expected to have a strong influence over the profits reaped from the Dow Jones this year.

Image by Young Money Cover 11/07 via CrunchBase

Trading penny stocks has recently become a popular option for investors willing to take a risk for a quick turnaround. However, there are a few things you should know about investing in penny stocks. After all, these aren't the well known companies that you'll be buying stock in. In fact, it may be hard to find adequate information on some of the stocks you're about to purchase. If you want to go through with it, here are seven things you should know about trading penny stocks.

One of the most revered presidents of the world bank is stepping down. Appointed by President George Bush in 2007, Robert Zoellick was World Bank President for five years, until today when he stepped down. He came from a highly experienced background as a US Trade Representative, former deputy Secretary of State, and working at Goldman Sachs before taking up the presidential seat of the largest bank in the world.

Crisis Initiative Achievements

Zoellick has been recognized as being the positive driving force behind World Bank’s historical role during the most recent economic crisis. During his tenure Zoellick used record financial capacity to assist developing countries with growth and poverty eradication.

This amazing businessman was the first person to alert the developing world to the food crisis that was about to hit and made a point of lending an additional $6billion per year to ensure agriculture could keep up with the demand.

Image via CrunchBase

The past decade has seen a number of innovations which have revolutionized the business world, but what are the best innovations and how have they transformed the world as we know it?

The value of the equity invested in business not publicly traded is known as the private equity market.

Why not just get a bank loan?

Since the early 1970’s the private equity market has been growing steadily.  The private equity market continues performing strongly and is still in growth today despite the still unfavorable financial climate.  A greater proportion of equity is generated across the private equity market as venture capitalists invest less and less regularly and with smaller financial commitments.  Banks are becoming highly reluctant to lend with the economy remaining so volatile.  Businesses are looking more than ever to the private equity market to raise capital.